Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Sometime in the middle of the night there was a quiet knocking on our door and I thought — The police? The man behind the desk? Dear God, those two Americans and their wives? Then Bruno's voice said 'It's me, Bruno.' I said 'Bruno!' I jumped out of bed. I thought — But we have forgotten Bruno! When he came in he looked white and sad in the pale pink light. He said 'What have you two been doing?' I said 'Bruno, Bruno, we're all right!' I jumped back into bed: Trixie was on her front sleeping. Bruno said 'The man downstairs said you were here with two Americans and their wives.' I thought — Oh I could manage, now, even the two Americans and their wives! I said 'And what have you been up to Bruno?' Bruno sat down on the edge of our bed: it seemed as if he were about to cry. I said 'Bruno. Bruno!' I put my arms around him. He said 'It's so awful.' Trixie half woke up and said 'What is it?' I said 'It's Bruno.' Trixie said 'Tell him to get into bed.' I pulled back the bedclothes and said 'Get in.' Bruno said 'Is that all right?' I thought — He has been so good to us, we are so lucky, he can be our child. Trixie said 'Put him in the middle.' I said 'Come in the middle.' He said 'Aren't I lucky!'

Sometime in the middle of the night I woke and it seemed that Bruno and Trixie were making love. I lay with my back to them. I thought — Well, I am not jealous: am I supposed to be jealous?

In the morning Bruno said 'Now it's your turn, Nellie.'

I said 'You never, Bruno!'

Trixie watched us. She said 'Am I supposed to be jealous?'

I thought — I suppose things may never be so good between the three of us again.

When later that morning I got home to our apartment my father heard me and came out into the hall. He looked as if he might be somehow frightened of me. He said 'Are you all right?' I said 'Yes, I'm all right.' He said Trixie's mother telephoned last night and asked if she could speak to her.' After a time I said 'So what did you say?' He said 'I said that you and she were taking the cat for a walk.' I thought — But one doesn't take cats for walks. Then — Oh I see. I said 'Thank you. Thank you very much.' He said 'But you are all right?' I said 'Yes, I'm all right.' My father said 'You look all right.' He came and put his arms around me. He said 'You will always tell me, won't you, if you are not?' I said 'Yes, I will.' I thought suddenly — But perhaps now I will not be so close to my father. He let go of me, and stepped back. I said 'You do know, don't you, that I've learned everything from you.'

He said 'Oh you needn't say that.'

I said 'Oh but that's something I can say!'

In 1926 my father moved to Heidelberg. I think he left Berlin because he felt he could do nothing more for my mother.

I went with him, and to a new school in Heidelberg. By this time I hardly missed my mother. I wondered — There must have been a time when I was close to her; she may indeed one day come back to haunt me. Occasionally in the holiday I visited her in Berlin: she worked in a room with an old printing press like a steam-organ. I thought — Here are the rolls of paper that provide the coloured lights, shapes, music, that my mother thinks are suitable for the masses.

Sometimes I still went with her to her soup-kitchen. Wooden compartments had been set up in which people reclined and tried to sleep with their heads on each other's shoulders. I thought — But there are no messages getting through: there is a blockage in intestines.

Nothing much remains in my memory of my time at Heidelberg: I suppose I was in some sort of limbo. I missed Bruno and Trixie: I made no real new friends. Bruno and Trixie and I wrote to each other — messages that tried to be sophisticated, witty. We did not

talk about feelings. I thought — But I am happy when I write to Bruno and Trixie: you do not talk about happiness.

Bruno and Trixie visited me one weekend; we went on a walk through forests, over hills. This was the time of the Wandervogel in Germany — when troupes of people, mostly young, went striding across landscapes, singing, talking, sleeping out, living rough; sharing what they had in the way of food and money. But Trixie now was rather grand: she had a girlfriend in Berlin who was older than she and who gave her money. Bruno seemed sad: he looked for boys he might pick up in the forest. On our walk it rained most of the day, and at night we had to take shelter in a youth hostel. Bruno was put in a separate dormitory: Trixie and I remained in separate beds.

I said 'Perhaps one can never repeat things.'

Bruno said 'But in a way one does nothing else.'

Trixie said to me 'You must come to Berlin, darling.'

I thought — Perhaps it was because it was unrepeatable, that that time in Berlin was so good.

When the time came for me to leave school and go to a university, I said to my father 'Do you think I should stay here in Heidelberg, or do you think I should go somewhere else?

He said 'What do you think?'

I said 'I suppose I should go on.'

He said 'You sound as if you don't want to.' Then — 'That's probably right.'

I said 'I can always come back.'

He said 'Yes, you can always come back.'

I thought — But I will be carrying it with me, what I have got from my father.

I went to the University of Freiburg in 1928. I was to study medicine, but I also wanted to take a course in philosophy. Freiburg is a hundred miles from Heidelberg: four hundred miles from Berlin. I thought — I could walk to Heidelberg in about three days: I will not want to get to Berlin.

Conditions in German universities had always been different, I suppose, from conditions in British universities in that one arranged one's own accommodation and could go to what lectures one liked; one could move from discipline to discipline and could work (or not) in one's own time. I got a room with a family who were acquaintances of my father, but I spent as little time with them as I could. I wanted to be on my own. I thought — But what is this

extraordinary condition in which one wants to be alone, and yet is always making arrangements so that one is not.

This was a time when student life in German universities was still dominated by what were called 'corporations' or 'fraternities'. There were nationalist fraternities, socialist fraternities, liberal fraternities, Catholic fraternities: inside each a boy might feel he was at home. Members of one fraternity were distinguished from those of another by the coloured ribbons they wore round their caps; otherwise the style of each was much the same. Members put up barriers against others to feel protected; but they did not feel seriously threatened because they knew that others were doing the same. The conventions were that members of fraternities should strut about carrying sticks and flaunt themselves during the day; then at night they should meet in beer-halls and drink and sing till they passed out. In this way they could imagine that they had asserted themselves without having incurred the dangers or indeed the responsibilities of self-assertion.

There were no such organisations for women. Girls to some extent felt themselves above such things; yet they were apt to hang about the boys' fraternities as if they were casual labourers waiting to be picked by gang bosses.

I thought — Of course I feel myself superior: but am I then hanging about on street corners in order to start a revolution?

There was a boy at Freiburg called Franz who was a member of the most elite of all fraternities, which was called The Corps (fraternities were graded strictly in terms of caste: members of one fraternity could properly have social contact only with their fellow members or with those of a fraternity immediately above or below it). Franz seemed to be aloof from even his elite fraternity. I understood that he was some sort of aristocrat; that he would have had to make no special effort to have become a member even of this elite fraternity; that he would have been included perhaps without even his wishing to be included. (I wondered — Does this make him more arrogant or less than other members of fraternities?) Franz would sit with other members of The Corps in the cellars of beer-halls in the evenings and he would drink and sometimes join in the songs, but for the most part would recline with his chair tilted back and his cap on the back of his head and smoking a pipe as if he were on a tightrope. I thought — He is like one of those people who show off by pretending to carry on normal life when on a tightrope. He was a tall thin boy with fair hair. His pipe was one of those long